Must-read Monday: Financial Gap Widens Nearly 50% in 10 Years

As Jill Barshay reports, it’s difficult to accurately calculate the spending gap among schools especially at the state and local level. But the trend is clear:

Poor schools are getting increasingly short-changed by the states and localities that fund them. The richest 25 percent of school districts receive 15.6 percent more funds from state and local governments per student than the poorest 25 percent of school districts, the federal Department of Education pointed out last month (March, 2015). That’s a national funding gap of $1,500 per student, on average, according to the most recent data, from 2011-12. The gap has grown 44 percent since 2001-02, when a student in a rich district had only a 10.8 percent resource advantage over a student in a poor district.

And although all sectors received cuts during the recession, since the recovery, state lawmakers are not restoring the funds to schools, which hurt the poorest students the most.

It’s particularly alarming because, as she points out, education is supposed to be the ticket out of poverty and the grand equalizer.

The growing gap between rich and poor is affecting many aspects of life in the United States, from health to work to home life. Now the one place that’s supposed to give Americans an equal chance at life — the schoolhouse — is becoming increasingly unequal as well. I’ve already documented the startling increase since 2000 in the number of extremely poor schools, where three-fourths of the students or more are poor enough to qualify for free or discounted meals (see here), and I’ve noted the general increase in poverty in all schools here.

What can we do about it? For starters, we should at least start talking about the fallacy of the American Dream with our friends, family and colleagues. It may have been true at some point, but it is becoming less and less so. We now know that your parents are the greatest predictor of future success in America. Schooling can make a difference, but not if the funding trends continue!